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What’s reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today?
Mark Reidmeyer
It is the convergence of urgency, innovation, and modernization that is reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today.
For decades, nuclear licensing operated in a relatively stable environment built around large light water reactors, predictable review cycles, and well-established regulatory pathways. Today, that model is evolving rapidly. Advanced reactors, AI-enabled tools, digital engineering platforms, grid reliability concerns, and aggressive decarbonization goals are all pushing the industry—and regulators—to move faster and think differently.
L. G. Faust, L. W. Brackenbush, R. C. Smith, L. L. Nichols, D. W. Brite
Nuclear Technology | Volume 15 | Number 2 | August 1972 | Pages 249-256
Technical Paper | Plutonium Utilization in Commercial Power Reactors / Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT72-A31149
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Gamma and neutron radiation dose rates from various experimental fuel assemblies and from full-size commercial BWR and PWR power reactor fuel assemblies containing UO2-PuO2 fuel with high exposure plutonium were measured. Maximum gamma and neutron dose rates encountered at 61-cm distance from the surfaces of the fuel assemblies were 6.5 mR/h and 25 mrem/h, respectively. It is concluded that commercial reactor operators can handle fuel assemblies containing high exposure plutonium without excessive personnel exposure and with a minimum of special handling procedures. However, radiation shielding for some fuel fabrication steps will be necessary with plutonium of the type expected to become available during the late 1970s.